My Experiences in the Honolulu Chinatown Red-Light District
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TED CHERNIN My Experiences in the Honolulu Chinatown Red-Light District I CAME TO HONOLULU in December 1938 along with about a dozen other civilians aboard the troop ship USS Henderson, taking a full nine days to make the crossing from San Francisco. That came about because in January one of the engineering professors at the Univer- sity of California, where I was a senior in electrical engineering, told the class that it looked like a bad year for engineers and advised us to look into a government civil service announcement posted in the hall- way for engineering positions of all kinds. I applied but heard nothing more until October, months after I had graduated, when a telegram came from the Navy Department asking me if I would accept a job as junior radio engineer at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard at $2,000 per year, plus a 25 percent cost-of- living allowance. That was more than twice the going rate for engi- neers. I had to look in an atlas to find where Pearl Harbor was and learned it was in the Hawaiian Islands about ten miles from Honolulu. I quickly replied YES. A stiff two-day examination was required in those days to qualify for civil service, but since I had graduated in June (my major was in communications with a minor in electric power), I passed it easily. The ship left San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day, and I became seasick but recovered in time to enjoy several days of watching por- poises and flying fish playing as they accompanied the ship. The ship Ted Chernin lives in Pearl City and is a frequent contributor to Honolulu newspapers on current and historical topics. The Hawaiian Journal of History, vol. 34 (2000) 203 204 THE HAWAIIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY docked in Honolulu on Friday, December 2, 1938, and after the chilly weather I was accustomed to, the relatively high temperature and humidity as I walked down the gangplank made me feel as though I had entered a Turkish bath though it was after 7 P.M. It took me more than a year to become acclimated. The several civil service recruits for Pearl Harbor employment (the single men) were taken to the Army-Navy YMCA at the corner of Hotel and Richards streets. My employment was in the Design Division, known at that time as the Industrial Drafting Room, along with three other recruits: Conrad R. Muller, who much later headed the IEEE Standards Committee, Joseph Baresh, and William F. Keller. I stayed at the Army-Navy Y a week, then moved to a cottage in Waikikl, "batching" it. I found myself spending all my time in the downtown area, especially the colorful Chinatown and adjacent areas, so I decided to move back. A co-worker, Daniel Y. S. Pang, an old-timer there, had taken me under his wing when I arrived, and when he learned of this, he got me a room at the Nu'uanu YMCA, only a couple of blocks from the downtown and Chinatown areas. Strangely, I had never visited San Francisco's Chinatown while I lived there. I am forever grateful to Dan Pang for showing me the ropes and making me feel at home here, on and off the job—also to Bung Tong Chang, Lee Hau Chun, Charles Jo Wong, Chew Wong, David Mun Chew "China" Wong, Leon Young, and many other "locals." I would walk a few blocks from the Nu'uanu Y to the downtown and Chinatown areas, and I would see local women who had come in from the countryside, the Japanese women dressed in their colorful and beautiful kimono and obi, wearing ornate zori (Japanese slippers); Hawaiian women with their holoku gowns and wearing lei around their necks and haku lei on their heads, some of the younger ones with a flower on one ear or the other to indicate whether they were available or spoken for; Korean women in their voluminous costumes reminiscent of nuns' habits, only white in color; and Chinese women in colorfully embroidered silk blouses and black silk slacks, some hobbling because their feet had been bound when they were infants, in accordance with ancient Chinese customs. We all had three-year contracts expiring on December 4, 1941. According to the contract terms, we were eligible for the first available transportation, nicknamed FAT, be it government or commercial, a MY EXPERIENCES IN THE RED-LIGHT DISTRICT 205 common arrangement. Baresch, Keller, and I left on the Matson liner Lurline on Friday, December 5, 1941, thereby escaping the attack the following Sunday, December 7. Muller, who worked in the Radio Sec- tion, stayed behind. I wanted to, also, but our boss, W. W. Mcllhenny, would allow only one of us to stay, and I lost the toss of the coin. When people not aware of the three-year contract expressed surprise that I should leave after enjoying the life in Honolulu for three years, I would kid them by saying, "Oh, I had advance notice." Some of them would look at me suspiciously. Bill Keller and I got into some misadventures on board ship and were taken for spies but were cleared by the FBI upon arrival in San Francisco December 10. Just a few months later, in April 1942, Keller and I returned to our jobs in the shipyard. I had begun to feel home- sick for the Islands and was happy to be back. Some of my fellow students at Cal had shipped out during summer vacation to earn tuition and living expenses doing menial jobs on Mat- son ships that sailed between Hawai'i and the mainland. I had heard from them that Honolulu had an open red-light district in its China- town. When I asked about this upon my arrival at the Army-Navy Y, I was quickly shown these "houses of ill repute." A localism for them was "boogie houses": the women were "heads." A euphemism used when suggesting a visit to one was "let's go climb the stairs," because almost all were in upstairs locations. I knew of ten that were crammed into the very few streets and square blocks of Chinatown, bounded by Beretania, River, Kukui, and Nu'uanu streets, and five more on the outskirts (Fig. 1).1 It was interesting that, although illegal, their existence was accepted as necessary. Originally located in Iwilei, they were moved to the Chinatown area.2 To make them acceptable, they were very strictly controlled, the Honolulu Police Department having the chore of keeping them in line. The "girls" were medically examined weekly. They were required to live in the houses. They were not allowed to do any streetwalking, and when they went out, they were not allowed to be accompanied by anyone. Curfew was 10:30 P.M. They could visit only certain beach areas during weekdays. No drugs or alcohol were allowed. The madams were required to see that the girls behaved and caused no trouble. The houses were required to be kept in a clean, neat, and sanitary condition. To this day, I can recall the characteris- FIG I. Map of Chinatown locations of houses of prostitution during World War II, drawn by the author from memory about 1966. Letters A through K indicate movie theaters; the letter X indicates the author's "pads." MY EXPERIENCES IN THE RED-LIGHT DISTRICT 207 tic odor of the disinfectant that was used to mop the floors and clean the walls and furniture every day. One could say that, except for their profession, the women lived almost like nuns. But rules are made to be broken, it seems, because I understood much later that some drugs and alcohol were involved. The girls realized, however, that their livelihoods depended on retaining their youth and good looks, so I believe most of them abstained. At least, in all the years that I fre- quented these houses, from December 1938 to April 1944, I never met one, whether I was socializing or otherwise, who appeared to be high. They all seemed perfectly normal and sober, joining happily in conversations, and contented, but for one exception (Fig. 2). This was a girl I happened to have known slightly at Lowell High School in San Francisco years before, a very beautiful little girl. She was sad and unhappy that she had been misled, and to bear it, she was so liquored up that I could smell the alcohol on her breath. The houses had long been accepted as a matter of course, part of normal living, and they did not have the tawdry, secretive, back-alley atmosphere that might be expected by someone not accustomed to brothels operating openly in a business district. Being known as a customer of these places did not tarnish one's reputation and did not affect one's acceptability in society, that I knew of. I made it no secret that I patronized them and found that had no effect at all on my rela- tionships with other people, men or women, or on my job. At my retirement party in April 1971, long after they had been closed down and I had been married to a local girl from Hilo for seventeen years, I was presented by my co-workers with a gift of one of those old-time folding gas station maps, marked with the locations of all the houses, as a souvenir of my single days. I've observed that people alive today who lived in those times still have that acceptance of prostitution and are proponents of it.